Last night’s screening of “12 Angry Men,” followed by the post-screening conversation with Broadway Tony-nominated actors Boyd Gaines and Peter Friedman, led to many insights about the film and the legal system.
Boyd spoke quite eloquently about how the Broadway production coincided with the most recent presidential election, and how the film, and the Broadway play, is really about doubt–reasonable doubt and otherwise, and why having doubt is not such a bad thing. After all, juror number 8’s doubt over the guilt of the accused is what drives the film forward, and without that doubt, the accused would have been found guilty and ultimately executed. Yet, the last presidential election seemed to focus on how important it is to always be resolute, firm, and unwavering. The film, and the play, reminds us that reasonable doubt provides a check against impulsive decision-making, magnified by the presumption of guilt that comes from having been arrested and indicted by the state.
Here, too, Boyd pointed out that despite the presumption of innocence, the fact is, most jurors believe in the opposite presumption–that if the state has arrested you and devoted its resources to finding you guilty, the presumption is that you probably are guilty. In fact, in most cases where the preliminary vote is 11 to 1 in favor of finding the accused guilty, it is the rare jury that will overturn its own initial convictions and find the accused not guilty.
We discussed why the 12 men are angry, why there were 12 men and no women or people of color, and whether the film and its dramatic tension would have been different had the initial vote titled toward innocence rather than guilt?
Peter was interested in the complexity of having 12 men, confined within tight quarters, pacing like animals and irritated with one another, all required to be in movement even when other actors are speaking, essentially going over the same evidence, and yet how dramatic this all feels, how emotionally complex an experience it is, not unlike the charged atmosphere of a jury room itself.
Another idea that interested Peter was the overt expressions of prejudice toward the accused that the audience gets to see and hear, how unapologetic it is until the jurors finally have heard enough, and they finally censure juror number 10 by turning their backs on him.
